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A Wee Bit o'Bacchus

At the National Theatre of Scotland, a new version of Euripides' Bacchae (by David Greig) kicks off the August festivities--starring a buttock-baring Alan Cumming: campy but not only campy, as Michael Billington (the Guardian) relates:

Greig and [director John] Tiffany, however, lay great stress on the story's sexual
quality. The results can be very amusing, as when Tony Curran's
stiff-backed Pentheus, eyeing up Dionysus, announces: "You're very good
looking - at least that's what a woman would say." But there's more
than a touch of camp when after a truly astonishing burst of flame,
symbolising the destruction of Pentheus' palace, Cumming strolls on and
says "Too much?" And later, coaxing the uptight Theban ruler into
donning a slinky green cocktail dress, Cumming cries, "Pentheus, come
out, you know you want to." All one can say is that being savagely torn
to pieces by murderous Bacchantes seems an excessively high price to
pay for being reluctant to emerge from the closet. Even if the first
half of the evening sometimes owes more to Julian Clary than Attic
tragedy, Tiffany's production builds up a formidable head of steam
later on.

The description of Pentheus' death is powerfully
delivered by an unnamed member of the chorus who, in their feathered
red dresses, possess a foot-stamping, hot-gospelling fervour. From the
entrance of Paola Dionisotti as the hapless Agave who, in a fine
Bacchic frenzy, has hunted down and killed Pentheus, we are in the
realm of gut-wrenching emotion. What makes the scene so moving is the
delusion of Agave. "Look at him, my lion," she says defiantly holding
up her son's head. And when Ewan Hooper's fine Cadmus tries to
intervene, Dionisotti mutters "Dear father, you're so grumpy."

All
this is first-rate: camp has been struck and we are into the realm of
high drama. Tiffany also pulls off another coup by blinding the
audience with a bank of light for Dionysus's final appearance so that
we seem to be dazzled by his divinity. We are also reminded that the
once fey charmer has now turned into a savage god. On surveying the
catastrophic violence around him, he says: "I did not force you - you
chose your own path." It seems a deeply disingenuous argument
confirming Euripides' cynicism about the gods.